Hermione got the anticipated warning from the twins three days before the first full moon of the school year, and the order to go ask Snape for help brewing the Wolfsbane potion until she could do it herself. She sighed as she waited to speak to him after class. Oh how she hated having to ask for help.

"Professor," she greeted.

"Miss Lupin?" He replied, not looking up.

"The full moon's in three days, will you help me brew the potion?"

At this he looked up.

"Lupin didn't send it to you?"

"We don't have an owl. They don't like us, understandably."

"Will this be a reoccurring issue?"

"Only until I learn to make it myself."

He regarded her carefully.

"Eight o'clock, Sunday morning. Be here five minutes later exactly or suffer through without it. I'm sure the wolf told you about the tree."

"I'll be here."

HJLHJLHJLHJLHJLHJLHJLHJLHJL

The study group the previous night was an experience; a few people turned blue, and in the process of attempting to de-blueify them, she became a bit of a mess and fell into bed that night without getting cleaned up. Even after a shower in the morning, she arrived on time, carrying all of her potions supplies and papers she planned to grade later with her to Snape's classroom, tying up her disastrous, still-silver hair before she entered.

Inside, Snape seemed to be having a very intense staring contest with Draco Malfoy. The door slammed itself behind her before she could catch it, turning both gazes very firmly on herself. She gave an unapologetic shrug, and sat her stuff on a nearby desk.

"Am I interrupting something?"

Neither answered, and Malfoy stomped angrily out of the room.

"Well, that was dramatic."

"Why are you here?" Snape demanded.

"Wolfsbane? You told me to come at this time."

He made the equivalent of Remus's Merlin help me find the will to live expressions and gestured to the door that didn't lead to his office.

"My lab is back here, set up at the empty workbench."

He watched carefully as she pulled out her actual cauldron, ignoring the disastrous one she used for classes, washed her hands, scrubbed the entirety of the cauldron and the rest of her tools, and carefully washed and prepared each of her ingredients. He raised his eyebrows at the set of professional-grade dragonhide gloves that replaced her usual.

"What exactly do you need help with?" he asked, accidentally letting his surprise at her professional routine show.

"It's mostly supervision at this point. Usually Lisa watches when I make this, but she's not here to correct the crap that could kill me, and she and Remus want me to do it perfectly thrice with supervision and be able to explain all of it before I attempt it on my own."

"How many times have you made Wolvesbane, exactly?"

"I've been learning since I was eight, but I've been making octuple batches because there's eight of us. My problem comes from not remembering that there's only one of me that needs it here and we don't have the money to waste on failed attempts."

"Then you just need me to keep track of how much of something you've put in and make sure you don't revert half-way and kill yourself with a faulty potion?"

"Exactly."

And so it went. At some point she had almost done something horribly wrong, and he had had to intervene, but for the most part, it was a fairly pleasant experience—or as pleasant as it could be, considering who they were and the fact that they were literally preparing a potion to hopefully stop her accidentally killing everyone in the castle.

"I assume that your performance in class is some sort of act, then?" He asked, examining the finished product.

"What do you mean?" She asked, surprised at the question.

"The fact that you're currently brewing a very high level potion with relative ease, that whenever you help others their potions come out perfectly while yours tend to be mediocre at best. From your grades, I'd say you've been doing the same in the rest as well."

She cursed mentally. She'd hoped it would be awhile before anyone bothered her about doing better in classes. "Do you think anyone else is noticing?"

"What is there to notice?"

And so she told him about the study group and the others she was helping and being helped by and the social walls she was attempting to break.

"Ah, that explains it."

"Explains what?"

"The other day, a large group of sixth year Hufflepuffs and Slytherins came in asking about part of a measurement conversion they didn't understand— "

"Milliliters to tablespoons?"

"Yes. I assume that you had something to do with that?"

"One of the younger muggleborn asked how wizarding measurements related to muggle measurements and was becoming very frustrated with inexact measurements for her potions. I thought it was interesting and wrote out a conversion chart that I saw once when Remus, Nate, and I went on a trip to muggle London. A lot of the older students didn't understand because they'd never heard of muggle measurements before, or cooked anything, and so didn't understand why he thought it was so important, so the next time we met, I set up a bunch of baking supplies and taught a bunch of witches and wizards how to do things the muggle way. It was fun for everyone, but a few didn't get it, so I told them to go ask someone who could explain it better. I didn't think they actually would, so I apologize if they bothered you."

"I'm glad that somebody is helping them learn to work with eachother. It's an issue that has caused a lot of unnecessary pain over the years."

"Yes, I'm hoping that they can continue collaborating with each other this way outside of school as well. It was such a pain to get them to cooperate, but now they're doing splendidly."

And thus began the mutually appreciated alliance between the pair of them. Snape would send problems her direction and she would fix them in return for increasingly frequent advanced potions lessons.

Even he will admit to being a bit wary at first, but years of being Dumbledore's double agent had taught him when not to get on someone's bad side and she was already getting to be one of those people you did not want to cross.

HJLHJLHJLHJLHJLHJLHJLHJLHJL

For the first time, Hermione was regretting coming to Hogwarts. Not having Moony and the others around to distract her made this full moon significantly more painful. She was glad the twins were almost finished with their animagus transformations.

She groaned as she sat up in the uncomfortable hospital bed, getting started on which of the cuts and scrapes she could heal and leaving the others for the twins and Madame Pomfrey.

It wasn't five minutes before she could hear the twins getting ready to sneak in. Fred set a massive block of chocolate on the bedside table and they each gave a quiet greeting before drawing their wands in an eerily coordinated way to get started on her back, as she couldn't see it.

"Sorry we weren't there for this one," George started.

"We'll be ready by the next moon."

"We almost had it for this one- "

"But we haven't been able to hold it a full night quite yet."

"Only off by an hour or two,"

"But it would only take a second to get bitten." Hermione finished. "It's fine guys, I get it. It took me months to get it more than an hour! You're fine."

George sighed and fixed a particularly deep set of scars a bit above her left hip. Of course, Madame Pomfrey chose that moment to walk in.

"What in Merlin's name are you two doing? Get away—"

"It's alright!" Hermione cut her off. "They've been healing me after moons for years!"

The medi-witches' eyes narrowed. "And your father knows about this?"

"My father is the one who put them at it!"

"Be that as it may, I reserve the right to supervise! And if I see anything unprofessional…"

That comment cut off all attempts at conversation for the remainder of her stay—apart from slight adjustments the witch made to the twins' technique when she could find them, that is.

HJLHJLHJLHJLHJLHJLHJLHJLHJL

Of course, her friends were suspicious when Hermione showed up at breakfast with the twins. Especially when they completely ignored the Gryffindor table and sandwiched her between them at the Slytherin.

"What is going on here?" Cloetta wiggled her eyebrows suggestively at the trio, but obviously not expecting them to play along.

Both boys swung an arm around her shoulders and in a practiced motion, she simultaneously fed them each a grape, all three returning the eyebrow wiggle.

"What the—you're ELEVEN!" Francis sputtered.

Alfredia rolled her eyes. "They're just messing with you idiots. Obviously, they aren't doing that!"

She shot Hermione a wink that suggested that she knew the reason and would keep it to herself. She wasn't surprised, her uncle was there the night she was found and the auror probably warned her that there would be a werewolf at school. That was how Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott knew, as Susan's Aunt Amelia was Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.

"Lupin!" Draco Malfoy, pain that he was, and his goons came loudly into the Great Hall, not bothering to lead up to his point. "We get that you can't do any better, but you don't bring your boyfriends where they don't belong!"

"Why not? You do?" She replied, much to the amusement of both the twins and the rest of the hall.

His face reddened and he sneered. "I refuse to sit with your Weasels!"

"Then don't. I don't care, and I don't hear anyone else complaining!"

And they weren't. The Twins were the only Gryffindors (before Hermione's study group) that didn't treat the Slytherins any differently than they treated anyone else. If anything, they treated them better out of respect for the ambitious kids that would one day become politicians, Ministers of Magic, and the parents of the richer children that would be running in and out of the joke shop they planned to open. Hermione also had it in very good authority that they had nearly been Slytherins themselves, or even Ravenclaw because of their knack for experimenting with things. It just suited them better to be Gryffindors—the true sign of a Slytherin.

Throughout the school, Gryffindors tended to be the least respected among the four houses because of a lot of Holier-than-thou attitudes and tendencies to idiocy. The Noble and Brave usually didn't show itself during their school years, but later, once they'd found their professions. During their school years, they were every bit of what they built the Slytherins up to be, not including those who dared to defy the house's status quo.

This year, Draco Malfoy and Ron Weasley were the problematic first years, actively seeking out conflict and causing issues. Hermione was certain that it would've been much worse had Harry, another of those who definitely should've been a Slytherin, hadn't been there to keep his soon-to-be-ex-best-friend out of trouble. He was smart, clever, sneaky, and (apparently unbeknownst to himself) rich beyond belief. His deductive reasoning skills were off the charts and when he tried, he excelled in everything, even potions once Hermione got Snape off his back.

Neville Longbottom was much the same; a veritable sea of power and potential, untapped because of his grandmother's insistence upon the use of a wand that didn't properly suit him and lifetime of being called a pathetic squib and living in his parent's shadow.

Lack of confidence was the bane of magic; but lack of the ability to do proper magic was the bane of self-confidence.

The pair, bonding over extremely close birthdays and lack of proper home life, were good influences on each other. Harry was encouraging and stood up for himself and anyone around him, and Neville just needed to be told that he wasn't as bad as he thought he was. Amelia Bones, Hannah Abbott, Blaise Zabini, Tracey Davis, Millicent Bulstrode, and Padma Patil along with Neville and Harry, led the first years in grades, power, and in some cases, wealth.

They were quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with and Hermione was going to enjoy sitting back to watch the light show when they decided to take over the world.

But back to the point; the fact that the tables were meant for specific houses was only meant for feasts and special occasions and things and there weren't really any rules to back any sort of segregation during the regular school meals. This meant that, the first time Harry and Neville went to sit with Padma at the Ravenclaw table, there wasn't anything to stop them. Once the rest of Hermione's study group and a few others realized that they weren't going to be hanged for sitting with their friends, there was a sudden flurry of motion as a good thirty students suddenly decided to switch tables, and nobody could do anything about it. Of course, there were a few bigots per year—the equivalents of Draco and Ron, though the houses varied—that made a bit of a fuss at first, but soon found themselves on the receiving end of one of Dumbledore's disapproving glares, which quickly stopped any arguments on most parts.

All except for Draco Malfoy.

Self-important little Draco Malfoy had not been able to swallow his pride and allow this little bit of interhouse friendship and decided to do everything in his power to ruin it. His father had heard about it, but as he was the only person on the board of governors who objected, and there was nothing about keeping the houses separate in the charter, his objection was overruled.

Draco was still sore about it and did his best to increase tension between houses. Hermione had her own suspicions that his aversion to the whole situation and more specifically the Weasleys was due to his obvious crush on Daphne Greengrass, who currently held a conversation about Transfiguration theory over at the Gryffindor table with Charlie Weasley, Tonks, and several Ravenclaws who'd overheard the conversation that Daphne herself had begun with a question to Tonks about her Metamorphmagus abilities and how they differed from normal self-transfiguration.

Hermione, realizing that she wouldn't be able to hold them back much longer, gave an exasperated sigh and whispered, "Veto rescinded," to the Weasley twins.

The results were anticlimactic for the moment, as the pair exchanged wide, terrifyingly manic grins, kissed her simultaneously on the cheeks, got up and left to plan Malfoy's demise.

Draco paled, realizing his mistake in insulting the notoriously genius pranksters.

Hermione grinned and gestured for her friends to follow her from the Great Hall to hear an explanation of exactly what she had just decided to unleash upon the school.

Most of the professors, who had all closely watched the exchange, couldn't decide whether to groan or applaud.

Snape groaned, knowing his godson would come whining to him.

Dumbledore applauded.